Jalood highlighted the progress made by the IWF in several areas and as he looked forward to 2023 he said: "The stakes have never been higher for our sport, particularly as we seek to secure its place on the programme of the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028."

The next six months are arguably the most important in the IWF’s history - its future in the Olympic movement is likely to be determined before the end of June - and some IWF Board members are unhappy with the speed at which progress is being made.

The heavy workload on a displaced Secretariat that has no chief executive is another concern that was raised this week when the Board met in Doha, Qatar.

But there is no question that the IWF under the direction of Jalood, general secretary Antonio Urso, first vice-president Ursula Papandrea and a new Board is moving in the right direction.

If you go back to the two-year period after January 2020, when a German TV documentary exposed widespread doping-related corruption in weightlifting, it is clear for all to see that things have changed for the better.

What happened in 2020 and 2021 persuaded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ditch weightlifting from Los Angeles 2028, stating that the IWF needed to overhaul its governance, make its anti-doping programme fully independent, and show "an effective change of culture" if it was to have any chance of being readmitted.

Good progress has been made on those fronts by the IWF - but not by certain individuals who seem intent on killing the sport.

"The recent IWF World Championships in Bogota showed everything weightlifting has to offer," Jalood said, pointing out that three dozen nations had won medals in Colombia last month.

The IWF membership, now at an all-time high, had "reinforced their commitment to reform" at a Special Congress before the competition, and there was a good example of significant change for the better when the landmark election of the IWF Athletes’ Commission was held during the World Championships.

Next week we should know who will lead the Athletes Commission and which three of its 10 members will sit on the IWF Board, when the results of an internal election are announced.

The IWF will become "the first International Federation to achieve such a level of athlete representation" according to Jalood, who was "already greatly inspired by the athletes’ commitment and ideas."

The IWF had also "taken significant steps in communications, commercial and broadcast", Jalood said, and since he sent out his message the IWF has advertised one of its most important roles in the new-look governing body, head of communications and marketing.

Another significant change was the decision to close the IWF’s Budapest headquarters, where so many questionable decisions were made in the IWF’s troubled past, to relocate to the "Olympic city" of Lausanne.

In the realm of anti-doping, the IWF’s decision to exclude nations that do not co-operate with out-of-competition testing is another strong move that will gain the IOC’s approval, following on from the long-term agreement with the International Testing Agency (ITA) to take over all anti-doping procedures.

All in all, plenty of reasons for optimism in the months leading up to crucial meetings at which the IOC will decide whether or not to readmit weightlifting in Los Angeles.

But… in weightlifting there always seems to be a but.

Eleven days before Jalood’s message went out, the triple Olympic champion Lu Xiaojun of China was informed that he had tested positive for EPO.

Lu was the second Tokyo Olympic medallist provisionally suspended for a doping offence in December.

The first, Zacarias Bonnat from the Dominican Republic, was actually an IWF Board member - as an Athletes Commission representative - when he tested positive for a prohibited substance that is popular among bodybuilders and CrossFitters.

Bonnat withdrew as a candidate for the new IWF Athletes Commission and was forced to miss the IWF World Championships - the Board’s reaction, in private, was much stronger than any comments made in public.

It did not end there.

Five days after Jalood’s 900-word missive two became three when the ITA confirmed that Anton Pliesnoi, a bronze medallist for Georgia in Tokyo, was provisionally suspended after testing positive for a substance similar to that which Bonnat had allegedly taken.

And today news came from India that Sanjita Chanu, a double Commonwealth Games champion, had been provisionally suspended after providing a positive sample for drsotanolone at the Gujarat National Games in late September.

Chanu complained of unfair treatment and demanded compensation from the IWF when, two years ago, a doping charge against her was dropped after administrative failures.

There was another announcement by the ITA - it had banned three coaches for life, again because of doping, within an 18-month period.

"Paris will be the last Olympic Games for weightlifting," was one predictable comment on social media after one bad news story followed another.

Blaming the IWF for this situation would have been fair and reasonable in the past because it was mired in doping-related corruption, but not now.

Back in 2019 and 2020, when Jalood was general secretary, he was one of the prime movers when the IWF began the process that ended with the ITA taking complete control of all anti-doping procedures.

It has done a very good job of catching the cheats by using intelligence, working more closely with national anti-doping agencies and carrying out more unannounced out-of-competition tests.

The results of its efforts since it teamed up with the IWF became clear for all to see this week when the ITA published a list of athletes who had been suspended for doping violations.

There were 109 names on the list, but thankfully most of the offences concerned cheating six to 10 years ago. 

A search of the document for "2012" produced 66 hits - Russia featured 44 times, and many of these offences were already in the public domain.

But 23 of those 109 doping violations have taken place since the delayed Tokyo Games, which means they will count towards any prospective sanctions for nations with multiple offences before Paris 2024.

There could be more, because the ITA cannot publish details of cases involving minors, nor in other exceptional circumstances.

Pakistan already looks unlikely to be allowed to compete in Paris because of multiple offences, including one by its best athlete Talha Talib, and Ukraine is in danger of exclusion if it has one more doping violation.

Yes, there is scope for the IWF to do much more than it has done so far, but it is changing its culture.

Unfortunately some individual athletes and coaches, unforgivably, are not.

They are ruining not only their own chances by doping, but those of all their fellow athletes.

As Urso told delegates at the Special Congress in Colombia last month: "The IWF can do a lot, but the National Federations must play their part."

Jalood raised the same point in his end-of-year address to the members.

"Responsibility for weightlifting’s future starts and ends with all of us," said Jalood.